// By Ron Shinkman // Health care in the U.S. has been very good to those who participate on the business end of the enterprise, but the comfort they enjoy is often at the expense of others. Those frictions are likely to guide the future of the sector in the coming years.
// By Marcia Simon, APR // How can a health system make a difference in utilization, quality and outcomes, and cost — and improve engagement with underserved members of its community? This was the topic of a recent presentation at the 2023 SHSMD Connections Virtual Conference.
// By Susan Dubuque // You don’t know what you don’t know until you’re faced with leading your organization through a crisis. Here are three stories from leaders whose best advice is to expect that, sooner or later, a crisis will come. It’s not if – it’s when.
// By Cheryl L. Serra // As a faith-based, mission-oriented organization, OSF HealthCare (OSF), founded in the late 1800s, has historically met internal and external challenges through innovation. In the past decade OSF, headquartered in Peoria, Illinois and serving patients in Illinois and Michigan, has ramped up innovation, digital care, and efforts to transform the health care landscape.
// By Wendy Margolin // In March 2020 Paul Gadd, director of internal communications at University of Utah Health, answered a call from the emergency management director. Senior leadership decided to set up BLU-MED tents — emergency management tents in preparation for a natural disaster or mass casualty incident. It was still early in the pandemic, and there hadn’t been a single diagnosed case in Utah. The site of sealed medical tents outside the hospital was sure to induce fear among staff and the public.
// By Brian Griffin // Last year, Central Pennsylvania-based WellSpan Health established two major goals to combat breast cancer and strengthen the health system’s market position: 1) heighten awareness of breast care services, and 2) increase mammography screenings. These relatively common goals for health care organizations are often supported by the same time-worn tactics that marketers have used for years to reach women, such as mass media advertising.
// By Susan Dubuque // The foundation that supports philanthropy at Virginia Commonwealth University Health deploys the same advertising strategies and tactics used to market service lines with the added benefit of building trust and reinforcing the mission and brand. Learn how you can apply your advertising know-how to support fund development for your organization.
// By Susan Dubuque // The chief marketing and customer officer for Renown Health shares how collaboration between marketing and PR enhances effectiveness and improves efficiency. Learn how bringing together marketing and public relations can stretch budgets, enhance the brand, and produce better outcomes.
// By Jane Weber Brubaker // No matter how large or small or rural or urban a health care organization is, there are certain universal truths that apply when it comes to being the guardian of its reputation in the community. But the way public relations and communications teams approach things may vary greatly depending on how they are structured, the strategic priorities of their organizations, and the needs of the community.
// By Susan Dubuque // The chief marketing and communications officer for Geisinger shares how collaboration between marketing and public relations enhances effectiveness and efficiency. Learn how unifying efforts between marketing and public relations can maximize budgets and generate better outcomes.
// By Wendy Margolin // The U.S. is the only high-resource country in the world with a rising maternal mortality rate. As shameful as that is, it gets worse. One group of women — Black women — are 2.6 times more likely to die from pregnancy than White women, according to CDC. In a 2017 study, Black women were five times more likely to die from postpartum cardiomyopathy, preeclampsia, and eclampsia than white women.
// By Susan Dubuque // Marketing and talent acquisition executives from Michigan Medicine share how collaboration and brand alignment helped to address staff recruitment and retention challenges for their organization. Learn how collaboration between HR and marketing can enhance recruitment and retention efforts.
// By Ron Shinkman // There are hospitals and health systems with reputations verging on veneration. But for all the world-renowned research and medical breakthroughs that occur at such institutions, the average person sometimes doesn’t realize that these famous hospitals also provide bread-and-butter clinical services. That can make it a challenge to attract patients seeking routine care.
// By Wendy Margolin // When it comes to women’s health, there’s a lack of attention, funding, research, and education. From the moment we start menstruating, it’s a secret. Girls are often embarrassed to tell their mothers, which is partly what makes Judy Blume’s book and recent movie, Are You There, God, It’s Me Margaret, so charming.
// By Brian Bekins // Your brand is more important than ever, especially for organizations seeking to be recognized over an expanding number of marketing platforms and sales channels. Shifts in the market, mergers and acquisitions, and other company changes also drive the need for brand updates. It’s why 75 percent of companies have undergone a rebrand since 2020.
// By Ron Shinkman // Providence has embarked on an ambitious outreach campaign with a singular goal: Keep its patients insured. The Renton, Washington-based health system has printed thousands of fliers and postcards, and actively posted on social media and on blog pages to encourage patients to review their status in the Medicaid program as soon as possible. The materials, carefully written to be understood by anyone with an 8th grade reading ability, have been translated into the top 15 languages used in the seven Western states where Providence operates a total of 51 hospitals.
// By Susan Dubuque // Marketing executives share how Moffitt Cancer Center’s marketing and HR teams work together to alleviate recruitment and retention challenges by aligning with the brand. Learn more about creating an effective recruitment and retention (R&R) strategy by working together and leveraging the strength of your brand.
// By Jane Weber Brubaker // Each fall, the SHSMD Annual Conference brings together the best and brightest in our industry — from seasoned veterans to tomorrow’s leaders — for three days of sharing, growing, and learning together. This year, the health care strategy and marketing community will convene in Chicago from September 10-12 at SHSMD23 Connections.
// By Cheryl L. Serra // Being in the middle of the western half of the United States — between well-known East and West Coast medical facilities — presented Children’s Hospital Colorado with a marketing challenge. In addition to making potential patients and their loved ones aware of its existence, the hospital wanted to demonstrate the individualized, innovative, and often complex medical procedures it offers. Its “Miraculous Everyday” campaign seeks to do just that.
// By Ron Shinkman // Ethnographic research starts with the assumption that consumers are experts on themselves. Beebe Healthcare and Baylor Scott & White Health use this approach to gain deeper understanding of patients and their context.
// By Susan Dubuque // Executives from Connecticut Children’s, UNC Health, and Stanford Health Care share how they integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) into the organizational culture. Read on for important lessons on advancing and operationalizing DEI efforts in your own organization.
// By Jane Weber Brubaker // Health care marketers are sometimes on the defensive when proposing budgets to their CEOs and CFOs, feeling the pressure to justify the expense and project the expected return on investment — especially for “softer” initiatives like brand building.
// By Clay Anderson // First impressions are crucial. Those early moments can make or break a positive experience, especially when seeking to build long-lasting relationships with new patients and customers. Even before an appointment begins, new patients, existing patients, or visitors often take measures to prepare for their visit, including figuring out how to get to their destination, where to park, and time to travel.
// By Ron Shinkman // When Matt Gove entered health care marketing, first with Grady Health and then Piedmont Health in Atlanta, he considered it “the ultimate consumer business because everyone has to interact with us at some point in their lives.” But Gove, who recently left his position as chief marketing officer for CityMD/Summit Health in New York City, says it didn’t take him long to figure out “while everyone may have to interact with [the health care system], it was never designed to meet the needs of the customers other than their clinical needs.”
// By Ross K. Goldberg // One of the oldest and truest axioms in consumer advertising is that the most successful and persuasive messaging finds a way to turn a feature into a benefit. Nowhere is this on greater display than in health care, and smart public relations professionals have known this for years. The fact that your hospital operates a 24-hour emergency department is a feature. The fact that “we’re here to take care of your child at 3 a.m. when you don’t know where to turn” is a benefit.